Who would have thought that our little Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, MA, near where I live in southwestern Massachusetts, could cause an international ruckus. It has, however, in its attempt to divest its collection of 40 of its most valued and beloved artworks to fund the gutting of its elegant Gilded Age building and the installation of a children's science museum. You can read more about it in Felix Salmon's New Yorker piece, and Charles Desmarais' recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle. As followers of my Facebook page know, I've been working with the citizen's group, Save the Art--Save the Museum, in the hopes that we can bring the art back and restore the Museum's original focus on the art and natural history of the region. Below is my op-ed for the February issue of Berkshire Trade & Commerce:
Saving the Berkshire Museum
By now even people
in San Francisco, where it was on the front page of the Chronicle a few weeks ago, know about our Berkshire Museum’s plans
to sell the best of their art collection and raise $60-80M to fund a new
mission. The National Review called
it “the biggest art-world story of 2017,” and indeed, it has been written about
in over 4,000 outlets worldwide.
The controversy has
attracted attention and sparked widespread opposition because it’s about much
more than the specific artworks the Museum's board and staff intend to
permanently send away from Pittsfield. Once transferred into private hands, it
is most likely that these important works, at least in our lifetimes, will never
be seen in public again. The action sets a dangerous precedent for all museums,
libraries, and historical societies, and is a blow to the very idea of public
access to original artworks, historical artifacts, and manuscripts.
Such deaccessions
are related to the damaging long-term national trend toward the privatization
of many kinds of assets previously held in the public trust. Escalated under
the Trump administration, this includes the selling off of national parklands for
private mining and drilling, such as is occurring in the Berkshires’ own Otis
State Forest and the plan for PCB dumps in the Housatonic River, as well as the
concern over “net neutrality” and control of the Internet which is, in essence,
a vital public utility. Responsibility for fixing the infrastructure and the
running of prisons, hospitals, and schools, is being transferred to private
operators motivated by profit rather than public service.
In contrast,
institutions such as the Berkshire Museum were specifically created to provide
resources and services for the benefit of the community, with the boards
considered the stewards and protectors of the assets. Called “trustees” for a
reason, they have heretofore been guided by ethical constraints that only
allowed sales from collections for the purpose of improving the collections, not
to fund operational expenses. Similarly, those who donated
items did so with the
intention that they would be cared for and available to the public. The ethical
guidelines also have another function, which is to ensure that boards will not
leap to sell from collections instead of doing the harder work of fund-raising,
or use such profit for individual gain, as in the awarding of construction and
other operational contracts to special interests, or the raising of
administrative salaries.
Because tax-exempt organizations are beholden to the public whose taxes
contribute to their support, their first priority should be the nurturing of
community trust. Toward this end, it is essential that their operations and
financial records be fully public and transparent, with any significant changes
in mission made in the context of community engagement. In the case of the
Berkshire Museum, however, many
felt betrayed by the Museum leadership’s decision to sell the art, as well as the
way they went about it. The Museum’s much touted (and no doubt expensive)
“two-year planning process” lacked transparency, rendering its results invalid,
as at no time were participants informed that the “New Vision” would be
achieved through the sale of important and much-beloved artworks. Instead it
was a fait accompli, announced after
the deal with Sotheby’s had been signed and the art already removed from
Pittsfield. Further engendering suspicion, the Museum held back the full list
of the 40 works until public uproar forced their revelation.
In addition, although the
Museum has asserted that if it does not sell the
artworks it will be forced to close in eight years, officials there have
offered no detailed proof to verify this claim. Meanwhile, ongoing analysis by several
independent experts has questioned this premise, as well as the need for a $40M
endowment, considered wildly inflated for an institution of its size. Note that
the Norman Rockwell Museum gets by with an endowment of $4.5M, while the Hudson
River Museum in Yonkers, NY, with a similar size, mission and demographic as
the Berkshire Museum, has an even smaller endowment. The Albany Institute of
History and Art, in an equally economically challenged area, mounts exhibitions
reviewed in the New York Times on an
annual budget of $500,000 less than the Berkshire Museum, and employs two
curators, where the Berkshire Museum has none.
So, yes, the Museum’s actions have created a
crisis, but within that crisis lies new opportunity. A recent letter to the Berkshire Eagle quoted P.T. Barnum
saying "Do
not squander good or bad publicity but exploit it!" The writer suggests
that, inspired by Barnum, a “Forty Works Exhibition” could be one of the
biggest art events on the East Coast for 2018. In addition, fund-raising
opportunities have increased a hundredfold, in just the kind of circumstances
that enabled the Detroit Institute of the Arts to reestablish itself after the
City of Detroit threatened to sell off its holdings to fund the sagging city
economy.
Although we’ve been
divided, what we have in common is that we love the Museum. The citizens’ group
of which I’m a part, Save the Art—Save the Museum, has repeatedly invited the
trustees to use the passion ignited in the community, harness the energy of all who want the Museum to survive, and come
up with a revised plan that saves the cultural treasures of the Berkshires
while creating financial stability.
To mobilize this
outpouring of local and national care, the Museum's leadership must
courageously acknowledge the public outcry against their plans and agree to
work constructively with the voices that have emerged, particularly those art
and museum professionals who have offered help.
In our interconnected world, only collaboration will bring about goodwill
and the long-term enthusiastic support the Museum will need for whatever
mission it adopts. Yes, the Berkshire Museum can be saved, but only by bringing
back the art and engaging in genuine community dialogue.
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